Recently, to facilitate creation of electronic albums and search of images, time information, positional information, and various conditions where an image was taken can be added to image data taken by an image pickup device.
Also, suggestions have been made for image search using such information added to image data, including information about the name of the place where the image was taken, the address of the place, the date and time, the person who took the image, and a keyword.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-230999 discloses a technique in which a mobile phone displays filenames, thumbnails, properties, etc. of images stored in a digital camera so that a user can select a desired image, and the selected image is sent from the digital camera to the mobile phone.
Global Positioning System (GPS) information can be used for positional information for specifying, e.g., the name or address of the place where an image was taken.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-211364 discloses a technique in which an image pickup device receives a GPS signal for positional measurements and the positioning information is sent to a server having a map information database. The server then converts the received positional information into map information and sends the map information back to the imagepickup device, and the image pickup device stores the map information received from the server in a header of the image data.
Not only GPS information but also base station ID numbers from public base stations in a mobile phone system, can be used for the positional information. Thus, various kinds of positioning information are used.
Accordingly, a user cannot know whether image data stored in an image pickup device is provided with GPS information or with base station ID numbers, so that he/she cannot judge which positional information is to be used when making an image search with positional information.
A user feels inconvenience also when searching not with positional information but with information of other kinds, because it is not known what kinds of search information are added to the image data stored in the image pickup device.
Also, though some portable terminals, like mobile phones, are equipped with a position measuring function using GPS or base station ID numbers, adding positional information about the image pickup location to an image taken by an image pickup device requires that the image pickup device be equipped with a position measuring function using GPS or base station ID numbers, or that the image pickup device obtain positioning information from another device having a position measuring function.
Equipping the image pickup device with a position measuring function prevents size reduction of the image pickup device.
Also, when obtaining positioning information from another device, the image pickup device requests the other device to send positioning information, and the other device receives the request, measures the position, and sends the result to the image pickup device, which requires establishment of connection just to obtain the positioning information.